The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus equipped with an ion generating unit that has an ion generating function.
It is no exaggeration to say that an image forming apparatus such as a copier or a printer is an essential device in office; in fact, they are installed in most offices. Besides, in recent years, image forming apparatus are also spreading in ordinary households and hospitals, and have become an article very close to us.
By the way, among the image forming apparatus are known such ones that suck air from surroundings of the image forming apparatus into the interior of its housing, supply the air to its image forming section and fuser section, and then exhaust the air outside the image forming apparatus. Among such image forming apparatus, there is an image forming apparatus comprising an air cleaning section configured so as to prevent hazardous substances generated inside the apparatus from being emitted outside the apparatus, by removing hazardous substances contained in an air current to be released outside the apparatus, thus cleaning the air current, and then by supplying negative ions (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 2005-4144 bulletin).
In the technique as described in the above mentioned Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 2005-4144 bulletin, in order to meet the need for removing toner powder, dust, ozone and the like that are occurring with the image forming operation of the image forming-section, it is unavoidable to dispose an ion generating section with an electrode in the proximity of the image forming section and in the air current that is formed around the image forming section. As a result, a problem that the efficiency of generating ions of the ion generating section deteriorates at an early stage has occasionally occurred due to an influence of such as silicon and/or the like generated around the image forming section. Accordingly, there has been a problem that the capability to clean the air around the image forming apparatus deteriorates as a period service of the image forming apparatus gets longer.
On the other hand, in a case where a unit provided with an air cleaning function is disposed at the outside of the image forming apparatus so as to take a large distance between the ion generating section and the image forming section, extra space becomes necessary for installing such a unit; consequently, there arises a problem that the space required for installing such an image forming apparatus increases.
The present invention is directed to providing an image forming apparatus capable of maintaining a function of stable generation of ions for an extended period of time, without increasing the space required for installing the image forming apparatus.